Wine Country Fire Fundraiser

Purpose
The purpose of the appeal is to benefit organizations operating in the area of youth sports and recreation in Napa and Sonoma counties which were adversely affected by the October 2017 wildfires. Awards will be made by the NVCC Board, or a committee established by it for the purpose, in its sole discretion.

Rationale and Guiding Principles
The Napa Valley Cricket Club is an integral part of the sporting community of the North Bay Area. Many of our club’s members and friends have been affected by the recent wildfires to varying degrees. In the aftermath, we asked ourselves: how might we do our part to assist those in our communities who have been most impacted?

Early on, as the fires approached Napa, some NVCC club officials scrambled to pack up and move a large volume of equipment, including cricket gear, an artificial playing surface, scoreboard, groundskeeping tools and spectators’ facilities, to get it out of harm’s way. It has taken club members years of hard work and financial sacrifice to assemble these resources and, fortunately, they were saved.
As the fires receded, we began to hear stories of other sport-related organizations in our communities that were not so fortunate.

Faced with so much destruction and loss, why focus on sports and recreation? Many large appeals are targeting the major challenges facing our region, such as the loss of housing and income. NVCC members, individually, are engaged in a variety of community initiatives to address the wider impact of the fires. As a sporting organization, we chose to band together, “stick to our lane” and address youth sports because the long-term goal of recovery is a return to normalcy, and a high quality of life, for all members of our community. And an important component of that, particularly for many young people, is the sense of joy and connectedness that arises from being part of a team, and from healthy competition. It’s just one piece of a huge, long-term recovery project, but we think it’s an important one.